Travel + Lifestyle

Wedding Planning (Pt. 7) – Where you can save money (and where to splurge)

Are you absolutely shitting yourself thinking about how much money you need to spend to pull your big day off? When we originally started planning, we set our budget for £10,000. I didn’t want a mega expensive day and didn’t want something overly fancy or elaborate, but I ended up blowing that budget entirely out of proportion.

Opt for digital invites or check out some new sellers on websites like Etsy. Often times, people who are trying to build up their online shop offer hefty discounts. Our invites were made by a woman based in Essex who does it as a side business and saved us loads of money. We also printed everything with Vistaprint, which always offers discounts & promos. To cut down on printing costs, we didn’t bother printing menus, programmes or any other little bits that add up.

Guest Favours can add up really, really quickly. We decided to do a small guest favour for everyone in a little blue box tied with a burgundy ribbon. We opted for a piece of maple fudge made by a Canadian expat living in the UK + a piece of English rock. We were able to get a generous discount on the fudge + we supported local / small business and we were able to have a blend of Canada / England.

Booze! This can get pricey. We didn’t have an open bar for the evening, but had free flowing booze for the day. We waited until the supermarkets had an offer on wine & prosecco and purchased everything we needed to with click + collect / free delivery. We were able to save hundreds of £ on our alcohol by doing this. Check with your venue to see if you can supply your own booze for your reception + dinner.

When you’re booking your flowers, select double duty ones! Using them at the ceremony? Find a spot in the reception / dinner where you can use them. Move your ceremony flowers in to the other areas of the venue for the evening. Don’t let your flowers go to waste! We used bridesmaid flowers and the pew marker flowers to decorate behind the sweetheart table my husband and I sat at. Also, opt for flowers that are in season to save a few quid.

Support small, local businesses where you can. We bought our cake from a woman who makes wedding cakes as a side business. Our flowers were from a locally owned florist who’s mother in law lives across the street from us (the marketing stickers on her van worked for us). We bought fudge from a Canadian expat who operates a side business for our wedding favours. We wanted to ensure we were saving money where we could, but were also supporting small businesses.

Use amazon and ebay wisely. You can get SO much stuff for super cheap if you’re smart and look around. All the little bits we wanted (place cards, label cards for our guest favours, ribbon, etc) were bought on eBay / Amazon for less than 1/4 the price on websites specific to wedding planning and local craft shops.

Planning to sell your wedding bits after your day? List them online before your actual wedding day. We had bits being collected while we were away on our honeymoon. We sold absolutely everything we could, most of it was gone within a month of our wedding.

We didn’t hire special linen – we bought! We found what we wanted on Amazon for a reasonable price and purchased it. I was able to sell it for a slight profit just after the wedding.

We also didn’t purchase any stemware. We went with what they had on offer at the venue. This can add up super quickly! Be careful if you’re interested in something specific. If you can purchase it out right, it may be worth it to do so and sell later on.

Negotiate your prices! We found LOVE letters on eBay and we contacted the seller (who was only renting them out) and because they were located close to our venue, they actually gave us 20% off the hire cost.

All of our suits were bought from Next. The guys loved them and can wear them again (and actually have). Next had the suits on offer when we went to purchase them, which saved us hundreds of pounds.

My bridesmaids dress came from Coast and was actually separates! My MOH has worn hers twice since our wedding, which is brilliant!

Where do I think you should splurge? Photography. We spent more on photography than we did on my wedding dress. We wanted brilliant photos from our day, and we wanted to be able to look back on them for years and remember how brilliant our day was. Our photographer was incredible and I couldn’t recommend her enough! The other splurge was videography. Originally, we hadn’t included this in the budget, but it was well worth it. You’re so removed from the day, so it was amazing to be able to rewatch it all, especially to see bits of each other’s day that we normally wouldn’t have seen anyway.